#mindbomb

[joumanadraws]

Opening scene to Gallifrey, season 3: Mindbomb, and possibly my favourite pages to make so far!

Sketch dump:

[do-you-know-this-dw-story]

mindbomb (audio: 2006)

[thedukeofdormont]

Batman 139

[fractualized]

What is your thought on Mind Bomb by Zdarsky?

Trepidation? 😅

Like a year ago I was feeling positive, having enjoyed Zdarky's writing in The Knight and then that preview of the Zur storyline in "I Am A Gun." TMWSL was in early days, and it was fun to make connections and wonder about how it might all tie together.

But after that, Bruce getting zapped to an AU and Gotham War felt like speedruns without real emotional payoff. When Zdarsky brought in Joker again, it was with Darwin Halliday, who apparently created not only Joker himself but three of them, not only calling back to a Black Label story I was praying DC would leave behind, but bringing back three Jokers when we already had a separate title with two Jokers. The idea that different DC titles could tie together in some cool revelations became laughable once I realized the timeline issues were getting worse and worse, and Gotham War only affirmed that continuity is a fool's errand. When I read/hear writers assert that they definitely totally collaborated on an event that was rife with inconsistencies, I just feel stupid expecting a payoff.

Which is all to say I'm reserving judgment until I see how Mindbomb ends— but really I'm waiting to see how Joker: Year One goes. It's not that I think that the first two Mindbomb issues are bad. But they are… kind of rote? They hit many batjokes beats, to be sure, but I think I'm too comics-tired to really enjoy them. The only thing I've found really interesting is Joker's seemingly suicidal behavior, and I assume we're going to get more into his mindset in the J:YO storyline.

Where apparently we've got some version of three Jokers waiting. And I'm already expecting that it's not going to tie into Joker's mindset in TMWSL, which I guess is just as well after how that ended.

But maybe I'm wrong! I was wrong about Deadly Duo, after all. Maybe Zdarsky will get back to the storybuilding that pulled me in before. Maybe whatever his 3J take turns out to be won't make me want to tear my hair out. Only way to know is to wait and see.

Something I've been thinking about is how I would probably react differently to some comics if I read them five, ten years from now. With older comics, I'm jumping around the past, reading stories in isolation, already knowing what the future holds. Definitely more entertaining than trying to get a full picture of the present and seeing a mess. 😬

[evilelirium]

Bruce, pls dont cut your hair

[angstandhappiness]

WILD

Here's the fascinating thing about this providing context to Gotham War and vice versa: Bruce says it's just him, that he's in control, but we see that he's an unreliable narrator, that Zur-En-Arrh has far more control than he realizes. There's a reason the opening comics for Gotham War took pains to show us Zur rattling at the cages of Bruce's mind and made sure to thread his commentary all through the event--he had way more influence than Bruce realized. To the point that, when Joker calls to Zur to come out and play, Zur can step easily into his body, that's how close to the surface he was. Which is now being paired with just about the only Joker story I've ever been vaguely interested in because ohhhhh yeah this is the perfect time for a story because this is everything the Joker has ever wanted from Batman--get rid of the riff raff that was distracting you, making you care about things outside of our little game! No more people you love to take you away from our little cat and mouse game! Now all that's left are Joker and "Batman", the most pure form of Batman in Joker's eyes, nobody else will have to matter now, now Batman will no longer hold himself back when it comes to really trying to obsess over and kill the Joker! All right, Zdarsky, I still don't like grimdark loner Batman or Joker-centric stories, both usually are some of my least favorite things, but you have my attention, show me just how rough "Mindbomb" is going to get, because you've clearly been tying this back to a dozen different things and I'll even check "The Knight" out of the library since you were bringing back characters from that series, too. (I think that's what gets me about Zdarsky's writing--for all that Gotham War ramped up and ended way too fast--but I strongly suspect that was editorial trying to make it an Event rather than what was supposed to be a story as part of the ongoings--he has tied in a LOT of other comics for context, which makes me feel like this wasn't just a sudden snap, but that Zdarsky is relying on us to be familiar with just how much shit the characters have been through and why they're at a breaking point now. And I want more "this comic will give context to this other comic" in DC, so I'm cautiously going to give this one a chance!)

[stopmyhearts]

I just finished Mindbomb and just what the fuck this is amazing I love it so much

[luckyshinyhunter]

Yay, he's back!

[wesavegotham]

I'm fully aware that it's not meant to be seen like this, but after the whole Zur fiasco I'm not sure if it's smart to go on a camping trip with your father, just you two, to the middle of nowhere and oh, please leave your gadgets and weapons at home, son.

[ocean-returns]

Pattern detection alert.

[zahri-melitor]

Chip Zdarsky’s Batman retrospective:

Generally, I really enjoyed this run. It definitely had its ups and its downs, but I honestly think I would rate it as one of the most internally consistent and balanced Batman runs since Rebirth. It’s competing primarily with James Tynion IV’s run for me, and on balance I think Zdarsky pulled off using a broader character set effectively, while Tynion instead added more memorable characters to the lore (Minhkhoa Khan was legitimately a solid addition to the lore that I expect will have impacts going forward; Alexis Kaye is less convincing, but she’s at least a very clear fill for a narrative hole that had developed).

In terms of what I think worked for me in Zdarsky’s run, I would say that the scale felt about right. Failsafe, The Bat-Man of Gotham and the backup The Toy-Box, The Gotham War and Dark Prisons genuinely charted a coherent Zur-En-Arrh narrative supported with Brother Eye/OMAC backstory. It was hooked solidly into Infinite Crisis and the lore used by Morrison’s Batman run for ZEA. I was never confused about what was being referenced and where Zdarsky was pulling story from, while still managing to fake me out on some aspects (the ZEA!Robin costume looming in the background there).

Structurally, I was impressed with the plotting. For a break-him-down-and-build-him-back-up run, Zdarsky avoided a bunch of the pitfalls I’ve seen other writers fall into. There was always a clear route out that he’d left in the face of getting cancelled to wind up the story altogether within each story arc. The only really dark leave-off point was probably Mindbomb; everything else finished in places where a slight change to the last few pages could have handed the book off to someone else in a pretty clean slate state. And that really impressed me, given how much the story involved Putting Bruce Through It.

Bruce had an open mental breakdown through the run which I think partly contributed to people’s mixed reactions to the story. Bruce was going off the rails, but the reason he was going off the rails was his own fault because he’s spent so many years pulling so many different complex psychological experiments on his mind. It’s the attack of personal hubris, and it’s frequently satisfying for me when Bruce falls into it. Because that internal fight for Bruce was so much of the story arc for him and he was his own main villain, I didn’t really mind how much of the plot was just putting Bruce in situations and watching him react badly.

In terms of other characters: absolutely the best writing Tim’s had since 2010ish. Zdarsky clearly gets and likes Tim’s motivations, and clearly enjoyed using him as the main supporting character. I deeply enjoyed that Barbara solely appeared as Oracle the entire way through this story, and was useful as Oracle in her classic manner. There was not a single moment where she suggested she might need to get into costume; instead she was busy dispatching people to do her bidding while getting her own stuff done. I also really appreciated the amount of Dick we got in the story: he was there every time something major was going down, but he also very obviously was based in Bludhaven, not Gotham. It’s the right balance; Dick should be there for everything major and for Bruce having problems, but he also shouldn’t be turning up for piddly stuff when there is a roster of other characters based in the city and available.

In terms of Damian: personally I really enjoyed the way the story gave Damian’s uglier personality traits an airing and let him fail in ways where he was still clearly trying to help and do the right thing. The Damian we had here was steadfastly committed to being loyal to his father, but also prickly and defensive if anyone suggested he was approaching it in the wrong way. And in a story that was essentially Damian’s first team story where he was back in Gotham after his 2 and half years spent off on tropical islands to find himself, I appreciated the contrast between the way Damian shows loyalty and the way Tim shows loyalty, the discussions of their separate conceptions of what it means to be Robin, and that Damian got the chance to go over a few bumps as he reintegrated (especially given that simultaneously Joshua Williamson was busy pretending not a single other member of the family existed). I get why people who are huge Damian fans wouldn’t have enjoyed it, but I didn’t think it was bad characterisation; I just think it was less coddling and non-Damian-centred characterisation. It was fully in tune with ways I’ve seen Damian react in plenty of stories over the years.

In terms of Jason: everyone’s going to hate me for saying this, but I think Zdarsky enjoys Jason the same way that Winick enjoys Jason: fun to prod about but also without ever losing sight of the fact that Red Hood as characterised is and was angry and violent with a tendency to overreact, all the way back to his Robin days. (Yes. Even in the 1980s. Starlin wrote it in there) He was a criminal in preboot and that still has repercussions on his character to the present day. And Zdarsky wants to poke the toy and see him suffer. I did find it quite noticeable (and personally in tune with my tastes) that a lot of the framing for group stories kept putting Dick, Tim and Damian together to bounce off each other, while Jason’s plotlines were isolated from the other three and more focused directly on Bruce. I think things got patched up fairly decently, with about as much apology as you can expect between Bruce and Jason; I also fully know people are going to be holding parts of this against Bruce forever because they love holding grudges that the characters don’t.

What I really wish the story had had: we really needed the extra issue that looks like it got cut out of Dark Prisons to get the story completed prior to Absolute Power. It was just too rushed in places, and some things clearly got sacrificed to make the story fit. I also feel that there was more to the Vandal Savage plot that Zdarsky never got around to using; there was a lot of lurking and not a lot of payoff of things. I assume it was intended for the story arc we never got to finish out his third year.

Also in terms of tidying up the narrative to hand the book over: I think Christopher Nakano’s death wasn’t actually necessary and the whole Koyuki Nakano and Jim Gordon plotline could easily have been skipped over. I suspect the intention was for a mix of the Vandal Savage plot that never really arrived and to clear the board so that whoever took over the book could stick in whatever Mayor and Police Commissioner that they desired.

All in all: I think it’s a story that reads well in trade, has plenty of things to dig into and obsess over. It definitely benefits from a bit of fresh air away from people microanalysing and complaining about things that get resolved in the next issue.

[gallifreyanhotfive]

Random Doctor Who Facts You Might Not Know, Part 60

Very soon after regenerating, the Second Doctor had pulled a large earring out of a trunk in the TARDIS, which he described as very fashionable once and remembered that at one point he used to wear it. (Novel: The Power of the Daleks)

Borusa once wrote a history book titled Rassilon the God. (Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible)

Like all other Time Lords upon initiation into the Academy, it has been confirmed that Susan once gazed into the Untempered Schism. (Audio: E is for...)

Many years after Nyssa left the Fifth Doctor to stay on Terminus, she had an adventure with the Fourth Doctor. This meant the Doctor had met Nyssa before Traken. (Novel: Asylum)

The First Doctor trained to be a ninja on Quinnis. (Novel: The Devil Goblins from Neptune)

The Ninth Doctor once got stranded when the TARDIS burped and jumped ahead 20 years in the future. From 20 years in the past, he communicated with a 12 year old girl named Sally Sparrow, knowing all about where to leave messages for her because she wrote about it in her homework, and that homework had been given to him by a spy in the future. Sally Sparrow successfully returned the TARDIS to the Doctor and grew up to be that very same spy who gave the Doctor the homework in the first place. (Short story: What I Did on My Christmas Holidays by Sally Sparrow) This story was later adapted into Blink.

Amendment 9 of the Fourth Constitutional Addendum is a Gallifreyan law also known as the "Stupidity Clause." K-9 brought it up while trying to think of a way to get Romana II found innocent during her trial. (Audio: Mindbomb)

On one of their first trips off Gallifrey, the First Doctor and Susan went to Garazone, where Susan bought him a model of the Nightjar after hearing stories about it. The Doctor put it up in the TARDIS. (Audio: Pursuit of the Nightjar)

This Nightjar model is still in the TARDIS by his Eleventh incarnation. (Audio: All of Time and Space)

Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart and Doris once saved Susan from drowning. (Short story: The Gift)

Soul catching refers to the Gallifreyan rite in which a Time Lord transfers their mind to another's shortly before their death, after which their mind will join the Matrix. The Third Doctor used it on Waro once, and the Eighth Doctor once used it to communicate with the Beast. (Novel: The Devil Goblins from Neptune; The Taint)

The Thirteenth Doctor once identified Halogi-Kari as a Harbinger, a rare and powerful race. He was a Wolf of Fenric and had transported Ace to Iceworld on Svartos when she was young. (Novel: At Childhood's End)

The Fifth Doctor once went temporarily blind when he plugged himself into a defense net and got overwhelmed. (Audio: The Children of Seth)

The Eighth Doctor tried to warn the Seventh Doctor of the circumstances of his upcoming regeneration, but the Seventh Doctor decided that he would proceed as he would have anyway (as foreknowledge is dangerous to the Web of Time.) (Novel: The Eight Doctors) This means that the Seventh Doctor knew he was about to die and regenerate in the beginning of the TV Movie.

Near the end of his life, the Seventh Doctor grew depressed and lonely, and he knew he should go to Gallifrey and give himself to the Chief Hospitaller and his team of psycho-techs. Gallifrey had access to neurosurgery, therapy, and drugs, and the last resort was forced regeneration with the hope that the next body would not have the same melancholia. (Novel: The Eight Doctors)

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[presidentdisastraofgallifrey]

I'd like to hear more about takeout on the kitchen floor :)

Ok so this one is basically my let-them-have-a-life Gallifrey au. Brax never comes back at the end of Mindbomb, Romana loses the election, and so Narvin breaks her out of prison before Darkel can have her executed. Romana insists they go get Leela. And they all wind up on Earth. They basically break the tardis to avoid being tracked, so they're stuck and none of them really have any idea how to live regular lives, human or not. But they have to get jobs. Pay rent. Figure out how to relate to each other in a non-emergency. And, of course, Leela is still blind at this point, Narvin was hurt in the escape, and I love writing Romana as chronically ill.

It will get to the point of cozy, silly shenanigans, but this is the best snippet I currently have from chapter 2:

“I—you—how—my leg!!” “I know. And I’m sorry, Narvin. I am. But I couldn’t let you die.” “You mean regenerate.” “Well, yes, but it’s different out here. It’s not like on Gallifrey. There are no zero rooms or trained medics if something goes wrong.” “So, on the off chance it would go wrong, you let them cut off my leg??” “Yes, but—” “My. Leg!” “Do you have any idea what it’s like to regenerate without support, Narvin? Do you know how risky it is to regenerate from a fatal injury without support?"

You can read chapter 1 here if you want!

[humandisastersquad]

Gallifrey s03e04: Mindbomb

[evilelirium]

Spoilers i guess

So i said before i think the joker will die in mindbomb, but if they are referencing 3 jokers again then they can easily kill him

[angstandhappiness]

Interesting

Okay, not to defend Gotham War or anything, but I think I'm talking myself into liking what I see it's trying to do. Starting with some great tags on this post:

#i get why people are hating on it i really really do. trust me#but TO BE FAIR... zdarsky has been making it overwhelmingly clear that bruce is SERIOUSLY unwell right now#like it's been nonstop Horrors for him for like. over a dozen issues straight. with no rest or time to process. and he doesn't have alfred#who was a HUGE part of his support system not to mention the finances etc etc#iirc there's even a panel that pretty much outright states that this is more of an issue of control than morality#and that includes the choosing sides thing like the batkids seem more concerned w how bruce is going off the fucking rails than#just the moral aspects#anyway (via @clownprince)

#Batman#Bruce Wayne#REAL#REAL REAL REAL#LIKE. Zur En Arrh is a LITERAL Defense Mechanism going Malignant at this point#Not only that but throughout Zdarsky's run there's been allusions to illnesses and Bruce Not Having A Good Time#Not Having a Good Time and Not Having Time At All to take stock of the sheer What The Fuck-ery that's been going on recently#Because it's been a CONSTANT steam of What The Fuck-ery nonstop#And the Worse is yet to come if one considers the future issues synopsis and the ''I am a Gun'' story by Zdarsky#(At most I'm a little bit concerned over how Zdarsky will try to wrap this up‚ but that's a normal concern especially about Comics)#(Especially Batman Comics considering how often Editorial likes to... do things) (via @kaosvrow)

I agree with so much of the criticism of Gotham War, especially that the arguments for or against Selina's plans are absolute garbage by characters who should be making better arguments and that the other characters are being used as bobbleheads instead of actually giving them their canon personalities--and, okay, I will also point out that in the VERY FIRST ISSUE, Selina's plan gets someone killed and so I'm willing to extend some grace that the story isn't trying to push forward that either way is actually right, I honestly don't think it's about that. I think it's a story about Bruce Wayne's mental state, because Zdarsky's been building this up for awhile now, like the issue immediately prior to Knight Terrors? Shows us Bruce's mental state is ALREADY absolute TRASH right then:

Zur-En-Arrh was already leaking through the seams of his mind, he was already feeling the impending doom of everything he cared about being burned away, that his mind literally couldn't watch his kids being happy and together and getting along without feeling like it was all burning to ash.

And then Knight Terrors happened, which was one more thing digging hard, boney fingers into his trauma, and he handled it pretty well in the moment, but it's such a giant, non-stop pile of stress on a mind that is already damaged to hell and back because of his trauma.

Further, the very first issue of the Gotham War storyline? The very first panel, the one that sets up the stage of what's going to happen, makes a very clear point about how this is about Bruce fracturing:

And then on the very next page, Zur-En-Arrh is literally stalking at the bars of the cage around Bruce's mind.

And then Bruce wakes up and it's immediately more establishing just how worried everyone is about him because so much has been piled on lately:

Bruce hides his missing hand from his family, just like he's trying to hide how scraped thin he is right now, and goes out on patrol.

Where his internal monologue is all about how defensive he feels lately, how he feels like the years are catching up to him, how nothing feels right but this, making it clear that Bruce is hanging onto Batman with a death grip because it's the only thing that feels stable to him right now.

And all of this is in the first TEN PAGES of the first issue, this is our set-up, this is our foundation, this is what we're being given to understand what this story is about. Then Batman #137 happens and it's literally ALL ABOUT BRUCE'S MENTAL SPACE, that Selina's plan is the catalyst, not the driving point behind all of it. Again, I'm in 100% agreement that the Batkids are acting like cardboard cutouts because you will never get me to believe that they didn't notice crime going down or that they wouldn't be pointing out that Gotham's wealthy are just going to start making their security lethal in response or that the Court of Owls won't step in, that this is not a long term solution to giving these people lives beyond crime, or even that a lot of them should be agreeing with Bruce, that they don't get to decide who is an acceptable victim. But the story isn't really about changing up the way comics deal with crime, it's about even the Batkids are framing it in terms of how it's about Bruce. Jason is really the only one who seems onboard with trying out Selina's plan, but even his confrontation with Bruce isn't really about that, it's about all their baggage, their fight immediately becomes about how angry Jason is at the way Bruce has treated him. This fight isn't happening because Jason's a true believer in Selina's plan, it's happening because he's angry at Bruce and Bruce is in a shitty mental place, after all the non-stop horrors AND feeling like he's been betrayed by the kids who he thought understood that people being victims wasn't acceptable, and so he lashes out at Jason.

When they fight, it's not because they're siding against Bruce, it's because he's become unstable and dangerous. The why of it doesn't matter, it's not about that.

(And I'm actually okay with the way that fight happened because I can buy that, for example, Cass might be holding back against him, she's a stronger fighter than he is, but he's being ruthless because of the state he's in, while she might be feeling more cautious.) When they fight, it's not because they're siding against Bruce, it's because he's become unstable and dangerous. The why of it doesn't matter, it's not about that. Even further, when Bruce fights against his kids, he's wrong and biased, especially in the fight with Dick, who he thinks has a sloppy offensive and doesn't know darkness like he does--to which Dick just immediately cracks him in the face because, yeah, Dick Grayson does know darkness and Bruce isn't as untouchable as he's trying to make himself seem (because being Batman is all he has right now).

I think it's important that it's Dick who defies his expectations here, because this story is building off context of what happened between Selina and Bruce, that they were truly together for awhile, they were about to get married--Selina mentions that it the first issue, it's a major thorn in that conversation when she throws out how she doesn't believe that Gotham needs Batman anymore, it needs her.

She's giving him what he said he always wanted, she's giving him the thing that kept them apart, he should be happy, should they head to the church now? Saying that he won't because he wants to be Batman more than he wants to solve the city's problems.

The failed wedding between them is important in part because of what Selina's saying here, illustrating that both of them are bringing a lot of baggage to the table but also because of what else happened during that storyline, why the context is so important. Because that storyline dovetailed into one about Bane wanting to take over Gotham and he needed Batman unstable and distracted, which was working after Selina left him at the altar, he was a mess. But you know what was saving him at the time, bringing him back from the ledge? THIS KID:

Dick was the one poking and prodding at Bruce with jokes and warmth and care and it was working. He actually got Bruce to cry in front of him, to release some actual genuine emotion!

Dick makes Bruce more emotionally stable, to the point that Bane had to hire KGBeast to shoot Dick in the head just because he was so good at stabilizing Bruce--this is also why Dick's the one who says he'll go talk Bruce down off his moral ledge in Batman #137.

So, it's Dick that has to be the one to defy his expectations in the fight, has to be the one who breaks through Bruce's offense and knocks him down in what feels like a betrayal even when it isn't, because this isn't a story about who's right and who's wrong, it's a story about Bruce isolating himself because he's mentally fractured to hell and back, because he's not trusting his kids, he's still hurt by Selina leaving him, he's still grieving Alfred's death, he's run ragged physically and emotionally and mentally by a series of exhausting horrors piled on him, he's lost his family's fortune, he's not even living in his own family home anymore. (I focus on Dick here as an illustration of tying this back to previous examples of Bruce crumbling and important context that the storyline is drawing on, but Gotham War isn't really specifically about Bruce and Dick's relationship, but more about Bruce's relationship with all his kids, like Tim and Jason and Damian all have equally important moments. But it's a very direct example of how his children are a huge part of his support system and draw him back from the ledge of being just Batman and back into being Bruce.) That's why the issue ends with Bruce getting the papers telling him that the bank sold Wayne Manor to Vandal Savage, because it's one more thing that's stripping Bruce Wayne away from the character, and leaving him with nothing but Batman and Zur-En-Arrh. Gotham War isn't actually a story about a war for Gotham. It's a story about Bruce Wayne going out of control and everything is written to serve that. The characters' fights are catalyzed by Selina's plans, but they quickly become about Bruce's relationship with the characters. The narrative makes heavy-handed points about Bruce feeling like he's losing his grip, that he's hallucinating and talking to himself, that he is extremely mentally unwell right now. Everything Zdarsky's been writing (like especially the "I Am a Gun" storyline right before Knight Terrors) has been building up to fracturing Bruce Wayne.